What Did Batman Drive Before The Batmobile? A Chrysler 300

Chrysler just won't end its association with a dark and brooding urban presence. But now that presence is Batman, not Detroit.

For the July 20 release of The Dark Knight Rises, the final piece of the Warner Bros. "prequel" trilogy about the rise of Batman, Chrysler has launched an "Imported from Gotham City" campaign that kicked off with a contest that allows fans to help create an original co-branded TV spot featuring the Chrysler 300 and Batman.

On Tuesday the campaign continued with the first airing, on NBC's America's Got Talent, of a 3o-second co-branded spot by the automaker and the studio that depicts a "transformation" of a Chrysler 300S into a custom-designed Chrysler 300 "Dark Knight Rises" edition.

"The TV spot was designed and shot to look and feel as if it could live inside the Gotham City itself," Chrysler CMO Olivier Francois noted in his blog.

Affiliating with The Dark Knight Rises is an interesting strategy for the Chrysler brand. It has been veering away from its original, Eminem-based "Imported from Detroit" positioning since it ran the thematically associated but polemically challenged Clint Eastwood spot during the last Super Bowl in February. The most recent significant ads from Chrysler are a suite of four TV spots that the company hatched several weeks ago, one for each of its brands, and none of them relies on being set in the Motor City.

"Imported from Gotham City" appears to be an attempt by the brand to cleverly squeeze a little bit more equity out of an "Imported from Detroit" theme that has worked wonders for Chrysler over the last couple of years but which has become a bit hoary.

Certainly, for a Hollywood co-brand, Chrysler couldn't do much better than catching a ride on the Caped Crusader's broad wings: The Batman movie franchise alone has been worth an estimated $2.6 billion worldwide since the 1989 release of Batman, vanquishing not only other superhero series but most other movie franchises over the last couple of decades.

Besides, by late next month, Americans are likely to be pining for sure-fire theatrical entertainment like The Dark Knight Rises after a summer of mostly disappointing flicks so far, starting with Battleship and continuing with last weekend's high-profile bomb, Rock of Ages.

Interestingly, too, the urban-aspirational voice that Chrysler has tried to create for the newly upgraded 300 sedan fits right into the Dark Knight storyline for Batman's ascension into superhero as well as with the gritty Gotham City mien that director-producer-writer Chris Nolan has created for the trilogy.

Arguably, the 300S indeed is a car that the Dark Knight himself might have been comfortable in. When Chrysler dug the 300 marque out of mothballs several years ago, its unique styling was both hailed and derided as "gangster" because of its chock-a-block front and rear ends and high shoulders. The design would have fit almost seamlessly into comic-book and TV storylines ranging from The Untouchables to Dick Tracy as well as Batman's world. Even the newly skinned 300, which scaled back some of the perceived design excesses of the early version, fits right in.

As the Chrysler-produced TV spot unfolds, an elite team of mechanics and machinists is transforming the vehicle with a matte black exterior, stealth body panels, advanced weapon systems and a jet engine. (No word on whether any of those features are available as options on the actual 300S or how much they might cost.) There's also a 60-second version of the ad on YouTube.

Chrysler's crowdsourced promotion will allow contestants to use a "suite of assets" including Chrysler 300 car footage, footage from the film, and music stems from the trailer to put together their own interpretations of "Imported from Gotham City" for the 300. They'll have two weeks to remix all that stuff for their spot, and then Nolan himself will personally choose the winner after public voting.

Look for Chrysler's association with Batman to be one of the auto industry's best marketing tie-ups of the season.

I have broad interests and experience as a journalist, covering the auto business, the consumer-packaged goods industry, entrepreneurship, and others, as well as politics, culture, media and religion. I used to cover the car business for The Wall Street Journal, which nomin...